Primer: Self-driving cars

The new frontier in motoring has had its ups and many downs throughout the years.

Primer: Self-driving cars

15 July 2015Tony Davis

Invented by

Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519), perhaps. When he wasn't working on his Code he knocked out a drawing of a robotic cart capable of following a predetermined path. Didn't have a lot of processing power (or normal power, it was clockwork), but it was a start. Science magazines of the 1920s were big on the self-driving idea; by 1939 GM's famed Futurama exhibition depicted "cars of 1960" picking up electricity and steering instructions from the roadways.

Great moments

The self-driving Google car presented as racking up 1.6 million kilometres without a smash, albeit always with engineers sitting inside. Just in case.

Low points

The self-driving Google car racking up 1.6 million kilometres with 12 smashes, which they had somehow kept out of those gushing "accident-free" press releases. The clarification was that eight incidents involved their car being hit while stationary, the others weren't the Google car's fault either.

In 2005 Mercedes-Benz called in the press to watch its new automated braking system. An S-Class drove through simulated fog – and straight into the back of another S-Class. Metal walls in the company's safety centre had confused the radar. Bugger.

The background

The first aeroplane autopilot was tested before WW1. But the sky is big and mostly empty, while roads are narrow, busy and full of impatient, often litigious, and occasionally irrational, people. Autopiloted cars would clearly take longer.

In 1935 David H. Keller's short story "The Living Machine" foresaw the steering wheel-free jalopy: "Old people began to cross the continent in their own cars. Young people found the driverless car admirable for petting. The blind for the first time were safe. Parents found they could more safely send their children to school in the new car than in the old cars with a chauffeur."

After Futurama, Detroit continued feigning serious interest in self-driving cars by claiming various show cars of the 1950s and 1960s were capable of autonomous operation.

The Japanese made real inroads in 1977 with a camera-and-computer equipped car produced by the Tsukuba Mechanical Engineering Laboratory. It could travel at 30 km/h, sans driver, following white lines on a closed circuit.

In the 1980s engineer Ernst Dickmanns crammed a Benz van with cameras and computers and successfully mixed with Munich traffic while saying (in German) "look mum, no hands".

In the early days it was the road that was going to be smart; Dickmanns's triumph was using on-board brainpower, not following wires, magnetic lines or poles.

By the 1990s Dickmanns' Benz S-Class was self-driving through Paris traffic, then traversing Munich and Denmark at up to 180 km/h without incident.

In 1995 a prototype from Carnegie Mellon University crossed the US, almost entirely autonomously.

By the 21st century elements of self-driving cars were standard in upmarket production cars: radar cruise control, automated braking, active steering (when drifting out of a lane) and auto-parking.

Latest trends

It's all some engineers want to talk about: trillions in economic benefits with cars that mobilise the elderly, liberate road space by driving in close packs, drop you at the footy, park themselves then pick you up afterwards. Pickled? No problem.

Regulatory hurdles are holding things back. Once solved, the rules could be holding you back. Some experts predict you won't be able to drive your own car for safety reasons. The computer will be better.

Some car makers argue their buyers will never go for that, but once everyone else is automated, maybe they'll be no choice. Welcome to a beige new world!